Core Document Collections

Scholar-curated collections of the documents that tell America’s history in the words of those who lived it.

Browse document collections by topic, theme, or thread.

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A scholarly project to bring America’s past to the educators of today.

About the Core Document Collections Project

When complete, the series will be comprehensive and authoritative, with texts from America’s presidents, labor leaders, farmers, philosophers, industrialists, politicians, workers, explorers, religious leaders, judges, soldiers; its slaveholders and abolitionists; its expansionists and isolationists; its reformers and stand-patters; its strict and broad constructionists; its hard-eyed realists and visionary utopians – all united in their commitment to equality and liberty, yet so often divided by their different understandings of these most fundamental American ideas.

To learn more about the scope of the CDC project, please listen to interviews with our collection editors.

Join your fellow teachers in discussing the Core Documents.

One-day
February 25, 2026
Valley Forge, PA
Free
One-day
February 26, 2026
Oklahoma City, OK
Free
One-day
February 26, 2026
Charlestown, IN
Free
One-day
February 27, 2026
Jefferson City, MO
Free